Sousa Looking To Put Swansea On World Map

Roberto Martinez helped to raise the profile of Swansea City during his spell here and received a lot of praise by fellow football managers and pundits, for our attractive and rather unique way of playing.

New boss Paulo Sousa though wants to take it a massive step further though, and make the club 'special'.

You can't fault the ambition and the vision this guy has, as he told Wales Online:

'I want to put the club on the map. Not just England and Wales, but the world.

'And not by just myself, but with the commitment of everyone here. I want to help the club become something special, something important and I don't have doubts with the people here we will achieve that.

'When? Step by step. I don't care about how long it takes, what I care about is when we get it we keep it and we keep growing all the time.'

The 38 year-old has a tough job to repeat last season's successful 8th position as both Sousa and his assistant Oliveira realise what a tough season it will be next year. Despite that though, the new manager is not feeling any pressure:

'I don't feel it,'

'And the club, the chairman, hasn't put me under any pressure. We are looking to continue a philosophy.

'We know our project, we know the way we want to go, we know what kind of targets we want to achieve and I have the time to do it.

'The club is bigger than any individual so it will take all of our commitment and will to make sure the club grows bigger than it is today, to be better and better every day, stronger and stronger and not just on the map in terms of Wales and England but everywhere.'

'The second year is the most difficult year for a club after promotion.

'This season, in my opinion, is the most difficult season in the last five or six years because we have a minimum of 10 teams who will be looking for automatic promotion. Teams are here can spend a lot of money and have started already spending.

'But I believe in our squad, in my club, and the people here to keep us among them. And slowly we will understand where we can look further ahead.

'The chairman has already told me about being in the top division and we want to get back there. And with time we will arrive there. I am ambitious, I want to go to the Premier League.

'We need to dream, but we must dream with 90 per cent of reality. Dreams are fantastic because they keep us alive trying to follow it. But we need to know the way to follow and we must be clever to recognise that.

You can definitely understand why Huw Jenkins and the board were so impressed with him during his interview. He has high ambitions for Swansea City and has full confidence that everyone at the club can work together efficiently to achieve their goals over the next few years.

Huw Jenkins was keen to bring in a manager that could also continue tthe attractive style of football that Roberto Martinez started back in 2007.

The fans have loved the way we've played over the last 2 seasons and the last we'd want is revert back to playing the boring long ball game.

Paulo Sousa is well aware of the team and how they play, having watched us last season and he said we were the best footballing team in the League.

Sousa added:

'The first week I arrived in Britain I spent as much time as I could watching Championship games and one of the first things I said here was that Swansea were one of the best footballing sides in the division,'

'That's something I want to continue. It's my philosophy. During my career I played at a lot of big, important clubs and every one of them we played good football and as a manager it's the same because I believe it's easier to win games when you do that.

'So this is a restarting of things. We want to continue things that have been done well here, but we also want to improve, step by step, to be better and better as a club, as players and as staff.'

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